Native Americans protest before the Minnesota Vikings and Washington game in Minneapolis. (Photo by Adam Bettcher/Getty Images)

Worry not, Dan Snyder, you can still use the name of your beloved Washington football team. But so can everyone else. That’s what the Department of Justice is arguing in a memo filed in a federal court on Monday.

According to the argument, the Washington football team’s name and logo is commercial speech, and thus isn’t protected under the First Amendment. Last year, the U.S. Patent Office canceled the team’s trademark after a group of Native Americans filed a lawsuit arguing the team’s name and logo was offensive.

Naturally, things got ugly. The team filed a countersuit against the group of Native Americans, then the group asked a District Court judge to dismiss the team’s lawsuit, but then the judge ruled that Snyder can proceed with their lawsuit, then the Justice Department said they were going to intervene in the whole matter. Yes, the whole thing is more complicated and messy then the team’s performance last season.

Anyway, the Justice Department’s memo, which can be viewed in full via Buzzfeed, argues that the team can still use their name and trademark if they want to, but it’s not protected by trademark law. So then anyone can make Washington football team merchandise, without fear of penalty. Here’s a summary of the memo’s intro:

The effort by Pro-Football, Inc. (“PFI”) to attack Section 2(a) of the Lanham Act in isolation ignores its context as part of the federal trademark registration scheme, structured to provide protections to trademark owners and the public without disrupting a parallel system of state law.

What’s next? There’s a hearing between the team and the defendants on June 24 where the whole matter will sure become even more complicated and messy.